PEARL DIVING ASSIGNMENT #1

Nathaniel Augustine Lynch

ENCE 424  Section: 0101
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Pearl Diving Assignment #1

So far in this semester I have learned that the key to interacting with others does not
solely rely on what you say, but rather everything involved in the process of communicating.
The most influential resource that led me to this idea was the book Crucial Conversations:
Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High (CC).
Focusing on Crucial Conversations
Defining a Crucial Conversation
In almost each day of our lives we must converse with someone (though these days
this statement may be a little less accurate). In CC, the authors define a crucial conversation
as “A discussion between two or more people where (1) stakes are high, (2) opinions vary,
and (3) emotions run strong.” (Grenny & McMillan & Switzler, 2012, p. 3). Examples of
such conversations can be ending a relationship, asking for a raise, or even talking with a
highly “political” friend. What I found truly interesting was how Grenny & McMillan &
Switzler explain how in these scenarios where we would want our mind and body to be calm
and logical, it is actually the polar opposite of that “We’re designed wrong. When
conversations turn form routine to crucial, we’re often in trouble… Countless generations of
genetic shaping drive humans to handle crucial conversations with flying fists and fleet feet,
not intelligent persuasion and gentle attentiveness.” (Grenny & McMillan & Switzler, 2012,
p. 5). Equating this to my own experiences I fell into this biologically designed trap in two
recent scenarios. One involving a conversation with my brother about owing me money and
the other being a talk with a co-worker of mine about their punctuality. In the first scenario
the conversation stakes were high as my brother had owed me 100s of dollars from a loan I
gave him to help care for his dog that he left behind when he moved to Florida. In the second
scenario the stakes were only big due to the fact it was a repeated offense that was not
addressed which as Grenny & McMillan & Switzler (2012) can perfectly explain “… with
time and growing emotions, the relationship turned sour and quality of life suffered…” (p. 8).
For both conversations I ended up failing to effectively communicate with the other person
resulting in a shattered relationship, in part due to me falling into our “flaw designed”.
Though I also succumbed to something that hurt my chances of correctly approaching the
conversation, which according to the writers of CC is called the Fool’s Choice.
The Fool’s Choice
When we believe that we must choose between being candour or kind in a crucial
conversation, we fall to what is considered the Fool’s choice. This believe constricts one to
only two options when talking about something with high stakes which prevents true
communication from happening. Thankfully for us, the authors help clarify how to avoid this
debilitating belief. This is done through dialogue, “the free flow of meaning between two or
more people.” (p. 23). With this free flow of information, we can form a pool of shared
meaning and have effective decision making as “The Pool of Shared Meaning is the
birthplace of synergy” (p. 25). Now back to the real-life scenarios. In my brother’s case I
was overtly kind leading to me resenting him to the point I stopped trying to talk to him.
Thankfully, I was able to break out of this by having a conversation where dialogue happened
and with our pool of shared meaning came to a fair conclusion on our loan issue.
Unfortunately, in the other case with the co-worker I chose to be blunt and ended up losing
that relationship for good. If I had the chance to redo the conversation, I had with my co-
worker about their tardiness I would have been more focused on having a dialogue rather
than try being outright candour. Now while the lack of dialogue led to bad results, my
mentality attributed a good part to these terrible outcomes.
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Dialogue Killers
The mentalities that prevented me from having a dialogue with my brother and my co-
worker in each crucial conversation were detailed as “dialogue killers” in CC. The first major
one in the book was “Winning” where the focus to be correct moves us away from having a
dialogue. The second one (and sometimes the evolution of the first one) was “Punish”
whereas our anger increases we move our focus on causing harm as reparations. For the
conversation with my co-worker these mentality shifts exactly happened. Initially I went in
trying to figure out why they were so late so often and clock out so early. When they made
excuses to me and told me I was in the wrong I ended up going into that winning mentality
and tried to point out why their excuses were invalid. As the now argument progressed, I
turned my focus on harming my co-worker in which I called him out for being repeatedly late
in the public work chat to shame him publicly. At the end of the day this led to no shared
pool of meaning and our whole relationship imploding. The third major mentality was “Keep
the Peace” where the focus is on avoiding any contribution and staying silent to avoid an
uncomfortable discussion. With my brother I was stuck in this mentality. I ended up staying
quiet about the debt issue after bringing up one time because how uncomfortable it made me.
As discussed earlier this led to our relationship deteriorating due to not having a consensus on
what was going on which made me infuriated and ruined our relationship. Ever since reading
about these issues, I feel I revaluate my intentions and my focus on what I want out of
conversation, especially one that is crucial. And so far, whether it might be an issue with my
family or roommates, the ability to recognize when I am conceding to these dialogue killers
or the Fool’s Choice has significantly improved my ability to approach crucial conversations.

Business Etiquette
How to approach a crucial conversation is not the only thing I have learned to utilize
from this class. The basic idea of using my full name to introduce myself is something I have
started to do and plan to do as I interact various people (especially those that lead to
employment opportunities). I have been used to only providing my first name when I
introduced myself and continuously been lost in the sea of the other thousands, if not millions
of “Nates”. Now distinguishing myself by my full name “Nathaniel Augustine Lynch” I feel
slightly empowered and have noticed that it makes a difference. Emails from my work
distinguish me by my full name rather than “other” Nate, making me more identifiable and
significantly harder to forget.

Impression and Interactions (Beyond Words)

What makes up an Impression
As discussed in class, we talked about how it only takes seven seconds to make an
impression and that only 7% is based on the words we say. The rest of what makes the 93% is
our tone and body language (38% and 55% respectively). Thus, this means we are always
communicating even when we are not talking. Applying this idea to improve my networking
abilities, I have placed more care on how I interact with new people (such as a partner on a
project in one of my classes) as networking is not just the people I meet at a career fair, but
also every class mate I talk to and get to know. I utilize eye contact more to keep them
engaged and look for feedback on whatever we are discussing. At the same time I avoid the
things we discussed that cause a bad impression, such as posture (I tend to slouch a nice
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amount) and bad tone (I might unintentionally seem hostile when I intend to be joking).
Inversely I have also taken notice to the hallmarks of bad impressions such as being
distracted by one’s phone (have a partner for a project who is more dedicated to Instagram
during our meetings than our work) and punctuality (obviously based on the co-worker
discussed previously). All in all, my ability to incorporate the lesson on impressions has led
to a positive change in mindset when I attempt to network.

DISC Personality Assessment

Results
I have a dominant personality (35%) followed somewhat closely by influential (30%),
and not so closely with steadiness (23%) and compliance (12%). Initially I disagreed with
the results as I do not see myself as someone who likes to assert myself, but I realize that I do
like to control situations in some capacity whether it means leading a conversation or
contributing to a common goal. Also, I agree that compliance is the smallest as I tend not to
be very organized and approach things abstractly.
Insights
From the assessment, the positive impact it told me I most likely make on people “…
have a strong inner motivation to influence people and circumstances…” surprised me. I
tend to think that such motivation is bad and not effective. Though weirdly based of the
whole description it made me realize that this drive helps me thrive in competitive scenarios
and prevents pressure from inhibiting my effectiveness.
Relation to Managing
The self-awareness of knowing one’s personality type allows one to play to their
strengths. In my case, being good at asserting myself makes it possible to be continuously
enthusiastic and motivate others. Meanwhile someone who is strong in compliance could
utilize their strength in organization to help keep a project on task and effectively broken into
parts that everyone understands.
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References

DISC Personality Test. (2018, December,14) Retrieved September 25, 2020, from

<https://www.123test.com/disc-personality-test/>.

Grenny, J., & McMillan, R., & Switzler, A. (2012). Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking

When Stakes Are High. New York: McGraw-Hill Education.

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